


Inaction

by obliviousally



Category: Dark Angel
Genre: Alternate Canon, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-03-22
Updated: 2013-03-21
Packaged: 2017-12-06 02:12:21
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,693
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/730416
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/obliviousally/pseuds/obliviousally
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Max can't deal with everything after Manticore and breaks it off with Logan. Suggestions of Max/Alec.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Inaction

Max wasn’t the hugest fan of the current turn of events. To be honest, the last thing she wanted to do was tie this mess up with Logan. That was her profession, after all: avoidance. Run from all your problems, Maxie, it’s not like they’ll every catch up with you. You’re faster, thanks to your genetics, right?

Despite the fact she’d been shown - time and time again - that she wasn’t, it was still her number one plan. 

Unfortunately, the fact that she all but ditched Logan three months back and really didn’t give him a proper explanation, outside of a vague ‘I don’t know if this is going to work’ excuse was coming back to haunt her. On the one hand, she was surprised it hadn’t happened sooner. It’s not as if she changed her haunts, she was still going to Crash and she hadn’t really changed her routine. Much.

So, it was a surprise when Logan did show his face at Crash on a night she was actually enjoying herself. 

“Max.” No ‘hello’, no ‘how’s it been’. Straight and to the point. “Can we talk?”

Being the last person she’d expected, Max’s eyes went wide. “Logan.” A glance given to her companions that read something like ‘I’ll deal with this’ before she looked back at Logan and nodded. “Yeah, we can talk. Outside?” Mainly, she was concerned about what he had to say and the possibility of her not being very happy about it. On top of that, she didn’t want all of Crash knowing her business, despite the fact that that very thing seemed to happen too often for her liking.

As they moved to the door, Max kept her distance, always a few steps ahead. It wasn’t just about the virus anymore, though that was the biggest issue. It was because she didn’t want to be sucked back in. Logan was…not manipulative. Persuasive would be a better word. He was good with telling people what he wanted and usually getting his way. He was good with words. Max, sometimes, wasn’t so much.

Over the few months they’d been, well, not together, she’d had time to evaluate their relationship. The virus was a huge strain between them and they were both acutely aware of such. Sure, some people could forge lasting relationship together without things like sex, but not being able to even touch the person you love? That’s rough. It’s really rough. The more they searched for a cure - and the more the search kept being diverted - made Max think that maybe it was better to let this one go. In the grand scheme of things, what’s losing one relationship? Maybe she was even better off not getting involved with someone. It clouded her judgment. After all, her goal had been to find the rest of her sibling and since she’d returned from Manticore, there hadn’t even been any headway on that. Most of the time, she was running missions for Eyes Only, for Logan.

Then there was the roadblocks in the virus cure search. It didn’t matter what they were, each one was more heartbreaking than the last and gave her an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. First it was Alec getting himself involved with Manticore again - though she never got the full, clear story - and her paying out to have an explosive removed from his neck. The lab tech left town after that, not wanting to be involved in any of the mess they had going on. Their best shot, out the window. While he left them with the workups he had done up to then, but Joshua had used them in a painting - not knowing what they were for or even how important they were.

After that, her heart just wasn’t in it anymore. It was going to be nearly impossible to find another Manticore tech who was willing to either work with them for less than an astronomical price - Engel had wanted ten large! - or that they could trust. A combination of the two was never going to be found, so she just gave it up. 

It wasn’t just the virus, however. Logan had her all caught up in Eyes Only business. It wasn’t even something he asked of her anymore. He just gave her missions and assumed she was going to help him. Since she’d come back from the dead, he was more protective of her - possessive - and his gradual, more open dislike of transgenics, her own people, was becoming unsettling. So, she began pulling away.

“You in there, Max?” 

They were outside and she must have wandered off mentally and Logan’s question snapped her back to reality. “Sorry, I’ve got a lot on my mind lately.” It was only half a lie. “Anyhow, talk. What’s up?” She went into casual business mode, no reason to make him think she was really thinking into this.

“Yeah, talk.” Logan glanced up at the Seattle night sky before coming back to the conversation. “I heard about you and…Alec,” A hesitant pause, like he hated to say the other X5’s name. “And I wanted to know if this whole thing could get some closure.”

Wait, what? Her and Alec? What about her and Alec? “I wasn’t aware there was anything with Alec and I.” 

Well, maybe there was a little something with Alec and her. They’d been spending a lot more time together recently, for whatever reason. Even so, the other male in her life - because he apparently wasn’t going anywhere - was just as frustrating sometimes as Logan had been in the past. Either he wanted and enjoyed her company, or he was pushing her away and being a douchebag because she was ‘scaring off the babes’. They’d formed a bit of a working relationship aside from that: Alec had a mercenary thing going and offered over jobs to Max that he either didn’t want or didn’t have time for. 

“No? I must be misinformed. I heard you two were an item, from various sources.”

“We’re not. What does this have to do with anything?”

“Max, you ditched me. You gave me the ‘it’s not going to work’ with no explanation and no warning. I haven’t seen hide nor hair of you in two months. The least you could have done was let me down easy if you didn’t want to do this anymore.”

Max wasn’t exactly keen on how he was speaking. It wasn’t hard to tell that he didn’t mean exactly what he was saying. In reality, he was saying ‘you could have dumped me proper before you went and hooked up with him’. ‘Him’ being Alec who she decidedly hadn’t ‘hooked up with’.

Except they’d slept together and that does count as hooking up.

Max sighed, “It’s not going to work, Logan. We both know it and all we’ve been doing it trying to pretend otherwise, trying to pretend that everything is going to be okay and some miracle cure is going to pop up. That’s not going to happen. Miracles don’t happen in this day and age, you know.” Brushing her hair back, she frowned a touch before crossing her arms. “I wanted this to work, Logan. I really did. But I can’t keep hoping for the impossible.”

“So you ran to someone you could touch?”

Ouch. That hurt more than she expected it to. Is that what what he thought? Is that what actually happened? It was. She couldn’t touch Logan and she could touch Alec and it had been so long since she’d been with someone. In fact, the last time she’d had sex before Alec was before Manticore got her back, her last heat cycle. After that, her and Logan had essentially become an item and then she’d been shot. 

Then she’d died.

Then the virus.

Suddenly, Max realized she’d been as bad as the boys, who she was always scolding for doing the same thing. Oh, sure, she could justify it, just like the boys could, but that didn’t make it okay. It didn’t mean she hadn’t hurt someone else in the process.

“I ran to - yes. I have no excuse there.” Because she doesn’t. There’s no excuse for what she did and that thought sits in her stomach. 

Guilt was something she was good at. She was good at blaming herself for just about everything. Not everything she blamed herself for were things she was actually guilty of, but she took responsibility for them anyhow. But real guilt doesn’t just show up with someone mentions the issue, real guilt lingers with you and makes itself known even when it’s not mentioned. This was going to be real guilt.

“I just… It wasn’t about the sex or the physical aspect,” Except it was and she doesn’t want to be that petty or sound the petty by saying it out loud. “It - we - just weren’t going to work.”

Logan takes a step forward and she takes a step back, keeping that space between them. He frowns and she looks away.

“This is it then? We’re giving this up?” He sounded hurt and that hurt Max. She was still emotionally invested in him and she wished she wasn’t. Sometimes she wished she wasn’t emotionally invested in anyone, that she could be that ice bitch everyone thought she was. 

“It’s better this way, Logan. We both know it.” That was her fallback. At least, if they’re both on the same page, she doesn’t feel like such a louse for how things panned out. “No more scrounging for money for a cure, no more close calls, no more heartbreak about the virus. This is easier, better. Safer. For both of us.”

At first, Logan’s expression seemed angry, like he wanted to tell her how wrong she was. Tell her they could still find someone, there could still be a cure, things could work for them. Then, it shifted to hurt, wounded and moved on to neutral, masking his emotions about the issue at hand.

Then, the conversation shifted, never really wrapping up the previous comments.

“I think I have a lead on some of your siblings. If you’re interested, swing by next week.”


End file.
